If this was how it was then this was how it was

So far she had not affected his resolution but he would much prefer not to die. He would abandon a hero’s or a martyr’s end gladly. He did not want to make a Thermoplyoe, nor be Horatius at any bridge, nor be the dutch boy with his finger in that dyke. No. He would like to spend some time with Maria. That was the simplest expression of it. He would like to spend a long, long time with her.

What a business. You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything. There was never any of what this is. You think that is one thing you will never have. And then, on a lousy show like this, co-ordinating two chicken-crut guerilla bands to help you blow a bridge under impossible conditions, to abort a counter-offensive that will probably already be started, you run into a girl like this Maria. Sure. That is what you would do. You ran into her rather late, that was all.

It hit you then and you know it and so why lie about it? You went all strange inside every time you looked at her and every time she looked at you. So why don’t you admit it?

Well, so that is what happens and what has happened and you might as well admit it and now you will never have two whole nights with her. Not a lifetime, not to live together, not to have what people were always supposed to have, not at all.

Not time, not happiness, not fun, not children, not a house, not a bathroom, not a clean pair of pyjamas, not the morning paper, not to wake up together, not to wake and know she’s there and you’re not alone. No. None of that. But why, when this is all you’re going to get in life of what you want; when you have found it; why not just one night in a bed with sheets?

You ask for the impossible. You ask for the ruddy impossible. So if you love this girl as much as you say you do, you had better love her very hard and make up in intensity what the relation will lack in duration and in continuity. Dou you hear that? In the old days people devoted a lifetime to it. And now when you have found it if you get two nights you wonder where all the luck came from. Two nights. Two nights to love, honor and cherish. For better and for worse. In sickness and in death. No that wasn’t it. In sickness and in health. Till death do us apart. In two nights. Much more than likely. Much more than likely and now lay off that sort of thinking. You can stop that now. That’s not good for you. Do nothing that is not good for you. Sure that’s it.

If this was how it was then this was how it was. But there was no law made him say he liked it. I did not know that I could ever feel what I have felt, he thought. Nor that this could happen to me. I would like to have it for my whole life.

So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one. Hasn’t it been merry lately? What are you complaining about? 

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls